I got a new phone back in January and I’m still in love with it. It’s an iPhone 5s in space grey and I have to say it’s pretty snazzy and there are so many cool little tricks you could do with it that I never would have found out if not for my habit for fiddling with things, so I thought I would share. Some are more obvious than others but they sure do come in handy.

Disabling message preview
Now this can really come in handy, it means when you get a text it doesn’t show the beginning of the text on lock screen which avoids the awkwardness if someone sees your phone. Do disable message preview go to Settings> Notification Center> Messages> and click off the Show Preview.

Turning off Read Receipts in IMessage
This means that when you are sent an imessage the other person can’t tell whether you have read their message or not. To do this go to Settings> Messages> and click off Send read Receipts.

Undo and Redo Typing
This means that if you’ve written something and then decide you want to delete it you can shake your phone and a Undo Typing message/Cancel message will appear. Alternatively if you accidentally delete something that you wanted to keep you can shake your phone and a Redo Typing/Cancel message will appear.

Viewing Time Stamps In Texts
This means you can see the time each text was sent. Just swipe the screen Left when you’re in your messages.

Enabling Emoji Characters
I’m a bit obsessed with using emoji’s, I use them in almost all of my messages to friends and family so finding out how to enable them awesome. To enable them you need to go to Settings> General> Keyboard> Keyboards> Add New Keyboard> and select Emoji. Next time you type just click the globe shaped button to view your emoji’s.

Flashing Alerts
I have a bad habit of getting distracted easily so I don’t notice when my phone vibrates and if I’m watching something I don’t hear it go off so having flashing alerts means it catches my attention. This is an awesome feature on the iPhone for people with hearing impairments. The flashing alert means a flashing light comes from the flash on your camera whenever you get a message etc. To get the flashing alerts turned on you need to go to Settings> General> Accessibility> and under hearing click on the LED Flash for Alerts.

Torch Light This feature really comes in handy when you’re walking back to your car with no street lights or trying to find a tiny key hole. You can get to the torch feature in lock screen just swipe the screen from the bottom up and click the torch icon. You can also use the camera, calculator and timer in the same way from the lock screen.

Camera Button
You can use the ‘up’ volume control button as the shutter button to take a photo instead of using the touch screen button. I find this so much easier and it’s more like using a normal camera.

Screen ShotPressing the home button and the lock button at the same time takes a screen shot of your screen, and you can find the snap in your photos.

Touch IDMy favourite feature of this phone has got to be the touch id. It means that you don’t need to type in a password to unlock your phone you just use your fingerprint! You can add multiple finger prints to the phone so you don’t always need to use the same finger to unlock the phone.